Feminism

The Thing About “cunt”


When I was in college, we had this game we played to wile away the time in the dishroom between onslaughts of discarded food, paper products and dishware. The rules were simple: out outrage each other by stringing together the most offensively vulgar collection of words or ideas that one could think of with the end goal being rendering opponents speechless through horror or laughter.

Laura was a master. She came up with the term “vaginal blood fart” to describe menstruation.

Yes, we were that immature but fortunately little parental money was being wasted in the pursuit of higher vulgarity as the majority of us were borrowing/working our way through school. There is some peace of mind in that, no?

But the word that none of us used was “cunt”, and it quickly became obvious that it was the stumbling point for everyone. No one could ever utter the word without blushing, stammering, breaking eye contact. Not even Scott and he was the vilest participant – hands down.

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Traditional Marriage


Stumbled across this post at DoubleX yesterday. Group of young feminist bloggers trash talking marriage and all things wedding mostly, but what struck me about it was the focus on details. As if tossing bouquets and ugly bridesmaid dresses were the point of relationships and marriage at all.

“It’s details,” I complained to Rob. “Why do people get so bogged down in minutia of marriage that they miss the point of the relationship that marriage is supposed to be all about?”

“Everyone can’t be as enlightened as we are,” he replied.

I know I’ve beaten this horse before, but intimate relationships are built on communication and an understanding of expectations by both parties. Whether a woman keeps her maiden name, wears white or decides to stay home with babies is really beside the point. It’s like shaved legs.

Shaved legs?

I wrote a post for 50 Something a week or so back about the fact I don’t shave during the winter. It’s pointless, as no one sees my legs really and it’s itchy besides. In my post I stress that my hairy legs are just hairy legs. It’s a practical decision that in no way should be misconstrued as a feminist statement. Things are simple, and female, should take care to avoid “statement” status in the realm of feminism because they usually become so entangled in nonsense they end up undermining feminism’s real point – equality.

The same can be said of these ridiculous debates on the “tradition” of marriage. Marriage is just a formalizing of an ongoing intimate relationship. The trappings are details. That’s all. They reflect personal or religious tastes – for which there is no accounting.

Whether a couple goes Disney princess or jeans/t-shirt on a mountain top doesn’t matter as much as the journey that brought them there or the continuation of it after that moment has passed.

I am no less equal to my husband because I took his last name or wore white. Getting married in a church or on a river bank surrounded by mountains (and I’ve done both – in white) was a moment – shining and special, imo – in something that began earlier and will continue until one of us is gone.

I suppose it is important to define one’s self, but turning everything into a symbol or anti-symbol seems a waste of energy better spent elsewhere.

My Life as a Knight


You Are a Knight
You are very unusual and even a bit eccentric. No one can really figure you out easily.
Because you’re not predictable, people behave irrationally around you. They may feel threatened by your presence, or they may underestimate you completely.

You do best when you’re close to the action. You don’t move quickly, so you need to be near the center of things if you want to make a difference.
You tend to act quickly, and decisively. In fact, you are often the first person to make a move.

Actually, this makes total sense. One of the things that made me an effective teacher was the fact that children had a hard time reading me. This tended to make them docile in the long run because they only thing they knew for sure was that doing what I wanted ensured a peaceful co-existence  and that going against me would result in something unpleasant.

I found this game via my husband. It proclaimed him “king” which should surprise no one who knows even the tiniest thing about him. One thing it mentioned was that many people depend on him and would be doomed should he “go down”. There are several people I can think of for whom this would be true but ultimately, they would simply become my responsibility, so it would be okay. Not as okay as they would be with him. I have a shorter fuse and am less willing/able in some cases to fix things. I am not one of the doomed and I find that sad on one hand and reassuring on the other.